Giuliani on his primary strategy via the NY Post:
Giuliani did not air a single TV ad in Iowa, and his 15 trips here were far fewer than front-runners Romney and Huckabee.
Instead, he has focused on winning Florida on Jan. 28 and more than 20 delegate-rich states on Feb. 5, including New York.
Giuliani defended the strategy yesterday and brushed off questions about his slide in the polls.
"When you get to Florida and the Feb. 5 states, we're ahead in some cases by large percentages and in some case by closer percentages," Giuliani told Fox News. "We believe it's a good strategy and it's going to work."
Considering the national polls (as of this post) are very tight at the moment between Huckabee, Romney, McCain, Thompson, and Giuliani, the only way I see Giuliani having success with this strategy is if each of the early states is taken by different candidates. This will further make the nominee pool look muddled to later state voters, giving Giuliani a shot. If, however, a clear candidate takes these early states, the perception of a clear emerging winner might push Giuliani further down the ladder and out of the race. The human psyche likes to glom onto an apparent winner.
Here's to a muddled race.
How the Clinton family handles politics is so absurd sometimes. You can tell they care about the children, ehh?
Sydney Rieckhoff, a Cedar Rapids fourth grader and "kid reporter" for Scholastic News, has posed questions to seven Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls as they've campaigned across Iowa this year. But when she approached the 27-year-old Chelsea after a campaign event Sunday, she got a different response.
"Do you think your dad would be a good 'first man' in the White House?" Sydney asked, but Chelsea brushed her question aside.
"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute," Chelsea told the pint-sized journalist.
So a high school kid rips up a bible in an English class...
"The school worries about his right to privacy and to free speech that to teachers' rights or the students' right to safety," said Paul Jacobson, Elle’s father.
He said that he's pulling his two high school daughters out of Parker High.
"It's not about free speech. It's not about necessarily about the Bible although that was disgusting, too. This is about the vicious, vile manner in the way this kid went about this and tried to make some kind of point," he said.
I guess my question to the father is how would you have wanted to have seen the kid make his "free speech" regarding how he felt about the bible, if that part of it wasn't the "real" issue?
Vicious? Vile? If the issue wasn't the bible or free speech, then it was the mere act of ripping up a book that threatened your child? So... trauma by paper cuts?
I am not condoning the student's actions, but the idea of free speech should not mean that people can't be offended -- I mean why do people burn the U.S. flag? They could do other things to convey their message about the U.S. government that wasn't so dramatic or offensive. But that is the catch. It is the drama. It is the symbolism. The essence of free speech.
It is the shock of burning the flag, throwing your war medals over the White House fence, ripping up a bible, burning your draft card or books, or even burning your brassiere that makes the statement.
Now I understand the restrictions of free speech in schools because of disruption issues, but I wonder if this truly qualified as a "substantial disruption of the school's educational mission."
If this father thinks he is shielding his kids from this type of behavior, I hope he is going to send them to some small college in the middle of nowhere. Because most college campuses these days live for outrageous free speech.
I have been very critical of Huckabee on this blog. And I think it just criticism.
He represents and personifies what I do not believe in. I am a tolerant person and I do tend to look past religion when it comes to politicians (all of them do have a religion), but there is something that doesn't seem right to me about Huckabee. Maybe it is because he is a minister. Maybe it is his rhetoric.
And his shady ethics (especially since he is religious) doesn't help his cause.
I read this earlier in an Associated Press article:
"The key issue of real faith is that it never can be forced on someone. And never would I want to use the government institutions to impose mine or anybody else's faith or to restrict," Huckabee said.
Those skeptical of the role of faith in his presidency, he said, should look at his record in Arkansas.
"I didn't ever propose a bill that we would remove the Capitol dome of Arkansas and replace it with a steeple," he said. "You know, we didn't do tent revivals on the grounds of the Capitol."
It sounds great at first, but his example to back up his record means absolutely nothing. It is just rhetoric -- not substance.
It is like saying I reached out to all you tree huggers by not proposing a bill that would have required you to slash and burn all of your shrubbery.
And then he had this to say in the same article:
In the NBC interview, Huckabee, a longtime opponent of legalized abortion, said he does not believe that women should be punished for undergoing the procedure, but that doctors might need to face sanctions.
"I don't know that you'd put him in prison, but there's something to me untoward about a person who has committed himself to healing people and to making people alive who would take money to take an innocent life and to make that life dead," Huckabee said.
Wait a second. Doctors don't just spontaneously perform abortions at will. It takes two to tango, yet it is the physicians who should be punished? This is called a pro-life politician trying to walk the line. And failing... I mean there is a good number of conservative women who are pro-choice and you wouldn't want to make it sound like you would punish women, would you?
All of you believers like Huckabee for his Christian beliefs. But the irony of Huckabee is going to be this -- if he is nominated because he is the most aligned with the base's religious beliefs -- he will lose the general election (and by a landslide). And the Democratic nominee will give you Supreme Court judges that will move the court further to the left on social issues.
Oh, the irony.
Huckabee is the quintessential right-wing social conservative with a left-wing, big government record. Something that gives me the willies all over. Especially, when he lives by comments like this: "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."
I think most of America has had enough of that mentality with Bush and I would consider Huckabee worse than Bush when it comes to religion. The line will be crossed and moderates/independents will shift their votes.
Well...
I am a pro-choice, atheist conservative and I will be voting in the primary as such. And if Huckabee wins the nomination or is asked to be the on the ticket as a VP, I will not be voting for a Republican in the general election.
(I won't be voting for Clinton either)
Looks like Brandon Ore got in trouble with the coaches (again) and will miss some playing time.
Virginia Tech running back Branden Ore will be held out of the first quarter of the Orange Bowl against Kansas on Thursday because he arrived late to a practice.
Kenny Lewis Jr. is expected to start in place of Ore, said athletic department spokesman Bryan Johnston on Friday night.
USA Today ran this story:
An essay that won a 6-year-old girl four tickets to a Hannah Montana concert began with the powerful line: "My daddy died this year in Iraq."
While gripping, it was not true — and now the girl may lose her tickets after her mom acknowledged to contest organizers it was all a lie.
[...]
"We did the essay and that's what we did to win," Priscilla Ceballos, the mother, said in an interview with Dallas TV station KDFW. "We did whatever we could do to win."
She had identified the soldier as Sgt. Jonathon Menjivar, but the Department of Defense has no record of anyone with that name dying in Iraq. Caulfield said the mother has admitted to the deception.
Some people just shouldn't become parents.
Who are these people? Absolutely appalling.
It's those, err, CIA numbers...
Are you kidding me? Just embarrassing...
Dear Huck:
If we were playing Jeopardy... the correct answer would be: "What is... never point your firearm at something you do not intend to shoot?"
Jim Tankersley on Huckabee's pheasant hunt:
Republican Mike Huckabee took his presidential campaign for a quick pheasant-hunting expedition in Iowa on Wednesday, and at one point, a reporter asked why he hadn’t invited sporting enthusiast Dick Cheney along. "Because I want to survive all the way through this," Huckabee replied, in a chuckling dig at the vice president’s accidental shooting of a quail-hunting partner last year.
Any good sportsman, though, couldn’t miss a distinctly Cheneyesque moment in the press accounts of the former Arkansas governor’s morning hunt: At one point, Huckabee’s party turned toward a cluster of reporters and cameramen and, when they kicked up a pheasant, fired shotgun blasts over the group’s heads.
This, friends, is dangerously bad hunting form.
Next round... Double Jeopardy. Where the stakes are even higher and include a Republican Party nomination for President of the United States.
We will be right back after these important messages from our sponsor, makers of adult incontinence undergarments.
Dear Huck:
If we were playing Jeopardy... the correct answer would be: "What is... the western border?"
The more I watch this guy, the more I wonder why he leads in polls. I thought conservative voters were a lot smarter...
The best is the third one.
